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Panel information
Panel 6. Developmental Psychopathology

Abstract

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The p-factor captures the shared variance of common forms of psychopathology (e.g., depression, anxiety, somatic problems, ADHD, conduct problems) and has robust evidence for its reliability, criterion validity, and utility (Lahey et al., 2021). Although some researchers have questioned what best characterizes the p-factor, recent theoretical advancements posit that the p-factor may be best characterized by emotion dysregulation, arising when an individual’s top-down regulation (e.g., cognitive control) is insufficient to regulate their bottom-up processes (e.g., dispositional negative emotionality) (Phillips et al., 2022). Adolescence is a critical developmental period marked by significant maturation of neural circuits involved in cognitive control and emotion regulation (Liew et al., 2022). Despite this, most neuroimaging studies investigating the p-factor have been atheoretical and confined to middle childhood samples, such as the ABCD study cohort (Hoy et al., 2023). Addressing this gap, our study adopts a theory-driven approach to examine whether the adolescent p-factor is associated with decreased resting-state functional connectivity between cognitive control networks and the rest of the brain during the transition to young adulthood. In a sample of 252 adolescents (M age = 17; 0.4% Asian American, 4.0% Black, 22.0% Multiracial, and 73.5% White; 54% female) oversampled for socioeconomic risk, we used a bifactor s-1 model of psychopathology, with emotion dysregulation parcels as reference indicators, to model the p-factor as well as specific internalizing and externalizing factors. Adolescents and their participating caregivers reported on adolescent psychopathology and emotion dysregulation during the adolescent phase of a larger longitudinal study and returned (M age = 19) for an fMRI session to assess their resting state functional connectivity. A latent variable of between-network global connectivity of CCNs was modeled with the frontoparietal network (FPN), dorsal attention network (DAN), and cingulo-opercular network (CON) as indicators. Results (see Figure 1) indicated a significant negative association between the p-factor and between-network global connectivity of the latent CCNs variable (β = -0.24, p = .035). Diminished global connectivity of the CCNs may reflect a neural mechanism underlying emotion dysregulation, where insufficient integration of cognitive control processes with other neural systems leads to broader psychopathological vulnerability. We did not find significant associations between global control network connectivity and specific internalizing or externalizing problems, suggesting that the evident effects linking brain organization and psychopathology was truly transdiagnostic and nonspecific. We then tested the unique associations between each of the three CCNs and psychopathology (see Table 1). Results indicated that after correcting for multiple comparisons, decreased between-network global connectivity of the DAN, but not the FPN or CON, with the rest of the brain was uniquely associated with the p-factor (β = -0.25, p = .016). Findings highlight the importance of connectivity between the CCNs (particularly the DAN) and the rest of the brain during young adulthood for transdiagnostic psychopathology. Interventions aimed at enhancing cognitive control and increasing integration of cognitive control networks with the rest of the brain may hold promise for mitigating a wide range of psychopathological symptoms. Future research using larger and more diverse samples across different developmental stages is warranted to build on these insights.

Author information

Author	Role
Eric M. Phillips, University of Nebraska-Lincoln	Presenting author
Douglas H. Schultz, University of Nebraska-Lincoln	Non-presenting author
Maital Neta, University of Nebraska-Lincoln	Non-presenting author
Jennifer Mize Nelson, University of Nebraska-Lincoln	Non-presenting author
Kimberly Andrews Espy, Wayne State University	Non-presenting author
W. Alex Mason, University of Nebraska-Lincoln	Non-presenting author
Timothy D. Nelson, University of Nebraska-Lincoln	Non-presenting author

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